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I had got to the dawn of the beautiful not caring, but fully aware, stage, which degenerates so imperceptibly into the doing something unpermissible stage.

Caitlin Thomas

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Caitlin Thomas
Age: 80 †
Born: 1913
Born: December 8
Died: 1994
Died: July 31
Author
Autobiographer
Poet
Hammersmith
London
Caitlin MacNamara
Beautiful
Something
Imperceptibly
Degenerates
Dawn
Caring
Fully
Aware
Stage

More quotes by Caitlin Thomas

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A lot of warm vulgarity is incomparably preferable to a little bit of pinched niceness
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[On journalists:] They are as disruptive a menace to the public body: as grating turds in the intestines are to the private body.
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Virtue in a man doesn't make you want to grab him.
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There is a great gulf between the really creative person and normal people. The totally creative person does not have the rest of his life in proper proportion.
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England, where nobody ever says what they mean: and by denying feeling, kill it off stone-cold at the roots.
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The wretched Artist himself is alternatively the lowest worm that ever crawled when no fire is in him or the loftiest God that ever sand when the fire is going.
Caitlin Thomas
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Anybody who thinks there is any vague chance of adult exchange with a child is up the spout and would be much less disappointed if they recognized the chasm unbridgeably dividing them.
Caitlin Thomas
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resignation, perhaps the most stifling word in the language.
Caitlin Thomas
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I don't trust sentimentality in men it goes with tyranny you can't have one without the other.
Caitlin Thomas
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Between threading a needle and raving insanity is the smallest eye in creation.
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I am unable, mentally incapable, of relating the dead thing, the broken body refusing to divulge why or where the occupant has gone, to the thing that was alive.
Caitlin Thomas
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There is nothing harder for an Artist than to retain his Artistic integrity in the tomb of success. A tomb, nevertheless, which nearly every Artist: whether he admits it or not naturally wants to get into.
Caitlin Thomas
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none of what I know is out of books. ... I prefer tactual learning. Touching, on the quick of the sore nail, of present, mobile life. To toy, to gnaw, to tear: at the living element of pain. Like at a living drumstick.
Caitlin Thomas
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But there is that about well-intentioned advice that has the opposite effect of the one intended, and causes a Spanish fly of perversity to enter into the hitherto passive soul.
Caitlin Thomas
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money ... is only important when you have none and though it may not be everything, it goes a very long way towards blocking up the winter draft of age.
Caitlin Thomas
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My bitterness is not an abstract substance, it is as solid as a Christmas cake I can cut it in slices and hand it round and there is still plenty left, for tomorrow.
Caitlin Thomas
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[On journalists:] They are the scavengers of society who, possessing no guts of their own, tear out the guts of celebrities. They have the sycophantic, false enthusing gush of maiden aunts: who are accustomed to being trampled on doormats.
Caitlin Thomas
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[On journalists:] ... however lyingly libellous they may be: nobody can seriously hurt the reputation of a Great person. If he is hurt: he is not Great. They can but scratch at his skin with their mice nails.
Caitlin Thomas
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But the true evil of drink lies in the disillusion: that the initial pleasure very soon evaporates, leaving a demoralizing craving for more, which is not even temporarily pleasurable. Which then leads to deterioration of the faculties of both body and mind plus a bewildering lack of co-operation between the two.
Caitlin Thomas
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If happiness comes at all: which is by no means prearranged it comes by the way, while you are seeking for something else. Something outside yourself, beyond yourself: in a brief absorption of self-forgetfulness.
Caitlin Thomas